


Cherry Wine

by O U K E (OUKE)



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, M/M, Misunderstandings, Onesided, Roster changes, Smoking, Toxic Masculinity, Worlds 2020, im sorry, lots of feelings, mention of mad lions era, offseason rumours, pain and suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:42:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28623513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OUKE/pseuds/O%20U%20K%20E
Summary: "Blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine."A look inside Oskar's head, a man with repressed feelings, finding out that the only ones who can make him drink the alcohol that makes him so violent are Martin and Tim. This, combined with the roster changes, triggers inner battles: Ones that he has been avoiding for a long time.
Relationships: Oskar "Selfmade" Boderek/Martin "Rekkles" Larsson, Oskar "Selfmade" Boderek/Tim "Nemesis" Lipovšek
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Cherry Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Oskar in stream: i dont have a good alcohol tolerance also i found some condoms under the fnc house beds lol  
> Me: * opens google docs *
> 
> this is my first fic! I tried to focus on nameless feelings and different points of view but english is not my first language so please correct my grammar <3
> 
> songs referenced through the fic:  
> -Cherry Wine by Hozier  
> -Forest by Twenty One Pilots

Oskar knew he didn’t have a good alcohol tolerance.  
Shit, he knew that better than anyone else. The few times he’d drinked it ended up badly.  
It’s not as if he misses the burning of vodka bathing his throat... On the other hand, what haunted him were the consequences of the drunkenness: He recognized that it made him more social and open but also fierce. The liquid seemed to disintegrate the walls of his patience, making him violent at the slightest annoyance.

He recalled his first attempts to fit in as a teenager. Then, the time he hid glass bottles with his old team of immature boys.  
He's not exactly sure about what he did or said in the night of the Mad Lions mischief. Honestly, he prefers not to.  
Mainly because in the following weeks his teammates seemed to know a lot more than they should. When they spoke to him, they looked at each other with knowing smiles and even began to converse in their own languages about who knows what: Anxiety assured him that he was the main topic.  
That younger and more insecure Oskar slightly lowered his black cap over his face, feeling the group's eyes pierce his soul as if his body was transparent. He normally would have reacted to confront them directly but, now, he had suffered too much and his pride was hurt. He was exhausted from so much helplessness.

At times like these, Nemi shone.  
With a concerned tone, the Slovenian tapped his shoulder gently to get his attention. A silly joke, a candy or a new game were more than that when they came out from his lips; For Oskar, they were lifesavers. Small gestures meant a rescue from that emotional hurricane.  
Also, at times like those he looked at Tim laughing and remembered his attitude on that night that disturbed his conscience so much…  
Bitterly, he remembered it again:  
In the hotel room, all the team members were sitting in unusual places due to the limited space. Some laid on the mattresses, others were in the wooden nightstand and the rest on the floor. The shorter boy was stretched out in a yoga-worthy position on one of the bed linens while Oskar, on the other hand, had no problem with resting on the dirty carpet.  
From his low perspective, the Pole saw the exact moment in which Tim's hands became nervously tangled: It was triggered by the oldest member of the team laughing and pulling out of the closet multiple bottles of various sizes and contents.  
Oskar didn't give it much thought because everyone already knew the reason for the meeting beforehand. If Tim didn't want to come, he wouldn't have shown up in the first place.  
Still, worry and guilt kept fluttering inside him.

The drinks passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth.  
By the time they reached Tim's pale fingers, the rest were expectant and had fallen silent.  
With mild rejection, Tim sniffed the liquid and read the worn label on the glass. His lower lip trembled.

“Come on, man!” Oskar pushed him while poking his ribs with an elbow.

The Slovenian hurried, swallowing a quick sip of alcohol. He gave a burning expression sticking out his tongue in disgust and handed the bottle to the Pole.

As the remaining content was lowered, Oskar saw from the corner of his eye how Tim's cheeks grew red under the low lighting of the hotel lamp.  
"Pussy." He murmured, wondering how just a shot of cheap whiskey could make him blush with teary eyes. Still, he didn't realize that his own words were being dragged out and his vision was slowly becoming blurry.

On the present date, Oskar has very few memories of the rest of the night:  
He remembers a sudden heat and the feeling of the walls boiling him alive as if he was inside an oven. He had assumed that was the reason why he had stripped himself of his garments, having as the main evidence the image of Tim using a jacket that said “Selfmade'' on the back as a blanket. To be honest, he can't say exactly how many clothes he had removed.  
He knows that the Slovenian was more affectionate than usual, clinging to all of his teammates. Also, he thought about how he would like to kick the team captain when he had Tim on top of him: Another thing he acknowledges is that he had not only imagined it, but yelled it in his face.  
The leader stood up suddenly, filling the air with tension. Menacingly, he puffed out his chest and faced Oskar, the two of them insulting and pushing each other harder and harder.  
The last thing he noticed was his coach bursting onto the scene with a door slam: Chills traveled down his body just by remembering it.  
He could still feel the discomfort during breakfast the next morning. He expected to have fun but the opportunities slipped like sand between his fingers, leaving only embarrassment and the haze of hangover behind his eyes.

After that event, he only drank some beer to remove the stress of defeat while looking at the starry sky in the courtyard of the FNATIC house.  
Sometimes, if the team stayed up late to practice, Martin would join him. The Swede didn't usually sleep there, but when he did, it seemed that his demons and Oskar's were coordinated.  
The first time that happened, the Pole was sitting on the metal stairs outside of the building while bathing in the cool summer night breeze. With his coat around his shoulders, he guiltily brought a can of beer to his tired lips. His eyes were lost in the dark when a spark of fire bursted next to him and made him jump with fright. He looked up to find Martin lighting up a cigarette between his lips with one hand covering the flame to protect it from the wind.  
Silent greetings were exchanged by slightly lifting their chins.  
Apparently, both of them shared vices and crises.

“I‘ve never thought Rekkles would smoke.” Oskar joked, interrupting the silence.

Martin laughed shortly and replied:

“If the others found out…” He let out a puff of gray smoke that dissolved in the air. ”We were supposed to be the healthy ones.”

Oskar, amused, shook his head and stood up, patting the Swede's chest as he headed back into the house:

“It’s our little secret now.”

Their personalities blended into a bittersweet mix because, if you asked one of his teammates, the Swede was a meticulous planner but the Pole enjoyed improvising and emerging from the chaos. Together, they created a perfect mess: Martin made Oskar pause to think and analyse, while Oskar motivated Martin to make risky decisions.  
"Be true to your name." The brunette replied mockingly when the blonde hesitated.

On one of those nights where stress pushed them out of the shelter of their sheets, they found themselves in the usual place: The third metallic step (Counting from top to bottom), the one with a paint stain on it.  
This time it was autumn and the dried leaves of the climbing plants were piling up, decorating the patio floor. They had to sweep with their hands the ones resting on the stairs before sitting down.  
Oskar released a doubt that had haunted him for a long time:

“Do I bother you?”  
“Not at all.” The Swede denied, a bit confused. “Why?”

Oskar shrugged, then added:

“I guess I'm not used to this. I mean, I wouldn't stand myself talking my ass off every night if I were you. It's weird to be so ... Sensitive? I don't know, dude, I have no fucking idea, I'm already saying dumb shit…” The beer covered his mouth, almost as if he was trying not to say too much.  
“Hm…” Martin hummed thoughtfully as he fiddled with the cardboard of his Marlboro box. “There's nothing wrong with feeling, you know... Oskar, I-”  
“Don't give me one of your speeches, Martin.” The Pole already knew that when Martin said his name in such a tone of voice a long talk was coming so he interrupted him (Half joking, half seriously).  
“Okay, okay…” Martin sighed, surrendering with a little smile on his lips as he adjusted his hair. “What I was trying to say is that it’s okay to support each other, this lifestyle can be very lonely. I'm with you, yeah?”

He said those last words with his typical charming smile and bright eyes, the ones that made all the girls go crazy: "He's so handsome!" they yelled, and Oskar couldn't help but repudiate them.  
"I'm with you." Oskar repeated in his head.  
He wished.

“No, not in that way. You’re not with me like that.” The alcohol was already speaking for itself, stealing thoughts from Oskar's mind and revealing his deepest interests. Frustrated, he crumpled the empty can until having white knuckles.  
“Are you sure about that?” Martin asked suggestively while pressing the end of his cigar against a railing, releasing ashes as he put it out.

They looked at each other with shocked but knowing eyes for an instant.  
Then, they agreed that the cold was getting unbearable and it was time to go inside, back to their rooms.

Oskar had nightmares with the last words that came from the blond’s mouth. "Are you sure about that?" The question would echo in his dream, reconsidering his whole existence.

After that, their meetings remained the same and, for some reason, that had turned into torture.  
Oskar found himself bleeding out emotionally: He swore the wound deepened every time they parted because he noticed that, in the time they had spent together, nothing had happened in between them. Why didn't they do something about their feelings? What were they missing?  
Still, he didn't know exactly what he expected from Martin, or at least had a hard time accepting it.  
The Swede didn't seem as intimidating as Oskar, why did he feel so helpless around him then? There, he noticed that Martin was the only one who made him feel small.  
But he was thinking of Rekkles himself, why would such a desired man waste time with him? He must be playing with his feelings.  
So Oskar swallowed the pain.

With Worlds’ training, Martin decided that he wasn’t going to spend the nights at the team house anymore:  
“I need to rest better… In my apartment, I mean. I want to take more care of myself so I can focus on winning." He said proudly, sitting on the usual staircase. This was the first time he was there without smoking.  
Oskar replied that he supported him but, deep down, he knew it meant less moments together. “Excuses”, he thought through clenched teeth.

He let Martin go away one more time, without knowing it would be the last.

In China, the team went through thousands of different situations and were having fun like never before.  
They swore that everything was going so well...  
From time to time the boys had arguments or didn’t agree on decision making on stage but it was the usual: They just weren’t ready to be eliminated so suddenly. The worst thing is that it was with victory within reach, brushing it with their fingerprints just before it was snatched away with the first reverse sweep in the history of the World Championship.  
After that humiliation, the team meetings were quieter than usual.  
Oskar always faced defeats jokingly but apparently things did not work like that there and, instead of laughter, he received judging stares.  
The chats on the trips were replaced by the whispers of music that could barely be heard from each other's earphones: They were clearly ignoring each other.

On one of those awkward rides, Pete gestured in the rearview mirror for Oskar to remove his earphones, as if he wanted to tell him something confidential. The Pole obeyed and the one with glasses muttered while driving:

“Give them time, the wound is still open.”

Thus, Oskar left so much space in between them that he arrived in Berlin without having exchanged a single word with any member of the team other than Tim (who, at least, was listening).

The day they returned to the FNATIC house was stormy, covering the entire landscape in gray tones.  
Only two boys got out of the black van that had brought them from the airport: The rest of the main roster returned to their own homes as Tim and Oskar's shoes splashed puddles, rushing in before their belongings got wet in the deluge. Luckily, they hadn’t brought many things to Shanghai. Used to traveling, they knew they were simple guys who didn’t need much to survive. In fact, more than half of their luggage were the team uniforms they were required to wear on stage.

Wet as stray dogs, they shook themselves in the main entrance hall. Their hair was soaked with rain and the clothes clung to their bodies uncomfortably.  
Oskar looked at Tim: His damp hair fell over his face, his cheeks and nose were flushed and, in brief, he looked smaller than usual.  
The Pole's heart skipped a beat when the shorter boy sneezed.  
He didn’t know whether to worry or soften: What he did know is that, within him, an instinct to protect was growing.

“Are you okay, Nemi?” He asked, carefully brushing away one of the strands of hair that covered the eyes of the mentioned. His voice didn't come out husky as usual, it sounded velvety now.

The gray eyes looked at him from below with a special glow highlighting them:

"Yes." He replied briefly. Then, he sighed thinking that (For once in his life) he should add something else. "I'm going to take a shower."

Tim grabbed the suitcases to carry them to his bedroom before going to the bathroom. He was interrupted by a pair of hands stealing them from his:

"I'll take them there for you, go straight into shower before you get sick." Oskar mentioned while grabbing the luggage.

The Slovenian nodded gratefully, now going to relax in the warm water and remove the cold layer of rain that wrapped his skin.

It was those little gestures between them that made them question everything. When it wasn't Oskar treating him like a prince, it was Tim loving him like nobody else.  
No one took care of them like that.

The rest of the afternoon went by calmly, with the soft cracking of thunder and rain curtains caressing the windows.  
For the first time in years, they decided to take an actual break from training: They just came back from a devastating defeat and the healthiest thing to do was distract themselves (At least a day) before playing again.  
Night was coming behind the clouds when Oskar got out of the shower and looked for Tim in the gaming room. Honestly, he didn't expect him to have kept the promise to avoid the screens and was shocked to not find him there pressing his keyboard.  
He kept searching, now heading to the kitchen.  
Of course, he found the Slovenian facing the counter: If he wasn’t playing then he was eating something sweet.  
The surprise he got when he saw what Tim was holding was even greater than that of not seeing him in the PC's room: It was a glass being filled with crimson liquid.  
Smoothly, the Slovenian ignored his presence and continued to lift the bottle.

"I remind you that I'm your age, I'm an adult..." Tim muttered as he held the crystal glass in a way too sophisticated to be wearing an old FNATIC hoodie.

Once the shock of the moment passed, Oskar's confused face was replaced by a smug smile:

"What are you drinking?" He went over to read the label, laughing out loud when he understood what was inside the bottle. "Cherry wine! An adult you say you are? More like an old man…”

Tim snatched the bottle from his grasp, growling annoyed:

“I indulge myself from time to time. At least I'm not drinking full packs of cheap beers every fucking weekend…”

Oskar was caught off guard by that comment, wondering how he had discovered it.  
Almost as if he was reading his thoughts, Tim mockingly added:

"I find out more than you think, Oskar..." He gently swirled his glass in circles, making the alcohol dance inside it. "Are you going to give it a try or not?"

The Pole shrugged, he wasn't quite sure:

"You know how I get…" He sneakily referenced the accident at Mad Lions.  
“It doesn't matter. Come on, don't be shy now.” The Slovenian replied, shrugging it off.  
"Are you getting your revenge on me? That spanish whiskey wasn’t that bad, you know." Oskar teased while pouring himself the showy wine in a simple glass tumbler that he used everyday.  
“Shut uuup...” Tim complained, dragging the words childishly.

Oskar took a swig of the wine, feeling the sweet fruity taste with alcoholic undertones. It wasn't like anything he had ever drunk before, it felt overly soft: He wasn't surprised it was Tim’s at all.

"And?" The Slovenian asked expectantly.  
“Meh, it’s okay.” Oskar replied being indifferent but, at the same time, pouring himself some more.

Thus, they continued talking and drinking with the murmur of the storm outside.  
The lights were warm and welcoming (Proper of the kitchen where they ate daily), interspersed with the brightness of lightning that slipped through the windows.  
Without realizing it, they had finished the entire bottle and moved on to another. They swore it was going to be just one glass but now their cheeks were burning and their mouths numb from swallowing and laughing. They felt as if they were walking in clouds and floating with their limbs completely weightless.  
Tim, at some point in the night, had ended up sitting on the marble kitchen counter and Oskar stood right in front of him.  
The alcohol had disoriented their senses and made them completely unaware of their distance, being close enough to smell the other's scent. They kept talking while losing more and more space in between them: Oskar could even taste the cherry on Tim's breath. He no longer paid attention to the conversation, just babbled to get closer and practically brush those sweet lips.  
The boys were only an inch away from answering a silent question that had existed since the moment they met.  
Their hearts were racing and, at this point, they were beginning to doubt that it was just a side effect of wine. 

"For how long have you been doing this?" Oskar muttered with a half smile and heavy eyelids, suffering for not appearing in that kitchen earlier.  
"Since forever…" Tim whispered, casually entangling one of his legs between Oskar's.  
"Shit, why didn't you tell me before?... I could have sworn this was the first time..." Oskar admitted, alluding to the stealth of the shortest.  
“No, we actually drank several times…”

Oskar's heart dropped and his attempts to get closer stopped:

"We?” The Pole emphasized the plural.

Tim sat up straight, just as confused by the interruption:

“Yes, with Mithy, Pete, Martin... Hyli too.” Puzzled, he answered while counting the names with his fingers. “What about it?” Tim asked confused but, more than anything, worried.

Oskar felt a hole growing in his chest.  
Tim got so clingy when drunk, just thinking about what might happened made him dizzy.  
The storm wasn’t soothing anymore but rather irritating: The thunders burned his ears and the rain sounded like a shooting.  
Without air, he held the Slovenian's shoulders in his hands.

"Oskar, are you jealous?" Tim asked, trying to understand what was going through Oskar's mind.  
"I ...You and... " The words choked in his throat.  
“You know you're still my best friend, right?”

It was the last bullet: The one that pierced the deepest.

"Sorry I didn't invite you earlier, you seemed so busy that I didn't want to bother you and…" There was genuine fear in Tim's eyes as he spoke, but he was interrupted.  
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!" Oskar yelled dryly, tightening his grip on Tim's shoulders.

The lump in his throat burned like a noose. He looked at the shorter boy with fire and despair in his eyes:

“God, I don't want to hear that. You don't know what you did with them, you don't know what drinking this shit makes you do, Nemi.” He laughed hysterically and filled with sadness. “If you only found out how you look right now…”

The blushed boy on the counter shifted in his seat, looking away. The thunders only made the scene worse.  
Oskar, completely drunk, continued to confess his darkest thoughts with a tone of voice on the verge of tears:

“What happened when you were with them?”

There was silence in response and Oskar bit his lip:

“You don't remember, do you? Of course not…” The spite came out in breathy words and teary eyes. “The other day I found… I found condoms under the beds here, did you know that?”

That was it.  
From one second to the next, Tim punched him in the face and finally escaped his grasp.

Oskar was left alone in the kitchen.  
He could hear Tim's quick footsteps fading away.  
Then, Oskar realized: Tim was running from him.  
The Pole slid down until he was sitting on the kitchen tiles, leaning his back against the kitchen cabinets.  
He didn't know if he was more hurt from the hurricane of emotions accumulated in his chest, about to explode, or the hit itself. He covered his nose with both hands as it burned so badly that it had broken through the haze of drunkenness.  
The last thing he saw that night was his bloody palm under the lightning of the thunderstorm.

.  
.  
.

“Oskar? ... Oskar!”

Someone was shaking him while calling his name.  
He tried to open his eyes but the morning sun forced him to close them again, incinerating his pupils.

"Hm?" The Pole hummed confused, not knowing why he was sleeping in the kitchen.  
"Thank God… He finally woke up." Another voice added.

Once he got used to the intense lighting, he could see Gabriel and Zdravets worried, standing next to him.

"What the fuck, man?" Questioned the taller one.

Oskar noticed that he was covering his face and stopped doing it, trying to understand what was actually happening. Then, he saw his hand with dried blood.  
Oh, that... He would have preferred not to remember, now the pain had awakened again.  
His teammates screeched when they saw his nose covered in brown scabs.

“Fuck, stop…” The Pole covered his ears, the hangover made the loud noises unbearable. “Long story, nevermind.”

He made an effort to stand up, feeling all of his muscles sore from the night spent on the hard floor. Hyli had already brought ice, although it honestly wasn't going to help much now.

"What are you guys doing here?" Oskar changed the subject, placing the ice on his nose in an attempt to calm the revived burning.

The pair looked at each other, as if preparing to speak: They definitely shared knowledge that the Pole didn’t have.  
A chill ran down Oskar's spine when he realized it was the same stare that his former Spanish teammates gave in the past.

Finally, Gabriel dared to speak:

"Today Pete called us..." He began while tousling nervously his curls. "He told us that after talking to Sam-”  
"And Dardo," added the one with glasses.  
“Yes, Dardo.” It seemed that they were focusing on unnecessary details to avoid getting to the main point. “They decided that the roster should change for next season.”

Oskar's heart sank into his chest. If what he thought was going to happen actually came to pass, he would faint right there.

"What changes?" The Pole asked impatiently.  
"At first it was just Mithy, then Martin…" Zdravets confessed.

The Pole’s eyes were wide open and he swallowed hard.  
"Just." Oskar repeated in his head with a face as pale as a ghost.

“But this morning they had a meeting with Tim... And they decided that he should also go away, Oskar.” Bwipo finished.

The ice slid down Oskar's hands and shattered into pieces as it hit the floor. His knees went weak and he almost fell too.

"Woah, buddy!" Gabriel was able to grab him by the arm in the middle of the air.

The Pole managed to support himself with both hands on the counter, just in front of the sink.

"I told you we should both come." Hyli wailed. Then, he stared at the empty bottle next to Oskar, not acknowledging the damage that a simple drink had caused. "Oh, cherry wine? Tim made you try it, no?”

In response, Zdravets received purple eyebags and a pair of frozen irises. They weren't the same blue fire from last night but an arctic lake.

"Not now, Hyli." Gabriel murmured.  
"Sorry, sorry ..." He whispered as he guiltily scratched the back of his neck and then tried to fix his mistake with reassuring words. "Oskar, if you need to talk to someone we're just a phone call away, okay?" Pete too.”  
"I know." Actually, Oskar didn't think any of them could help him.

The boys were leaving the place when the Pole exclaimed:

“Hey, Hyli!”

The one with glasses turned back right in front of the door.

"Has Tim been drinking this with you?" He asked, pointing at the bottle of cherry wine. Inside of him there was a last spark of hope, still believing it had all been a misunderstanding.  
"Yep, why?" Zdravets replied naively.

Oskar clung to the edge of the sink as if his sanity depended on it.

"Forget it." His voice sounded strained, choked even, almost as if the words were being dragged out from his throat and ripping it on the way. 

The other boys exchanged more puzzled glances and resumed their march to the exit. Gabriel and Zdravets knew perfectly that they were getting only half the story. It was not difficult to decipher what had actually happened but they felt the noxious aura of Oskar and recognized he would end up exploding if the two of them kept poking where they shouldn't.  
Therefore, they preferred to leave him time alone to process whatever had knocked him out in the kitchen.

When the door closed, Oskar could hear the voices of his teammates going further and further until he was immersed in absolute silence. In that moment, he could feel the world slowing down and was faced with loneliness itself.  
A flash of memories from last night slapped him and anxiety crept in again, like a thousand spiders crawling up his ankles.

Oskar shook his head and came back to reality, realizing he had been stunned and still, staring at the sink.  
Then, he saw his awful reflection in the distorted metal of the dripping faucet: The image was so expanded and shrunken in all the places it shouldn't be… It didn't look like his own face at all. He gave a weary laugh, thinking that the Oskar in the tap really was the abomination he felt like.  
In that reflection he also noticed the dried blood on his nose. Shit, he had forgotten to clean it... What had hurted him that much in the first place?  
Scenes from the night before were swirling around again, making him lose control and shaking his existence like a tornado.  
Every time he remembered it, he felt as if Tim hit him a thousand more times.  
The pain was getting worse, time only seemed to intensify it and the news he’d just received made the guilt pile up like garbage inside his chest.  
He needed to erase all traces of that failure: Right now, he couldn’t fix his mistakes or go back in time to stop it from happening but he could at least try to avoid the memory. He was suffocating and needed to escape from his shame.

Desperate, as if blood melted his skin, he ran to the bathroom. He scooped chairs and tables, ignoring completely the bluish bruises that bloomed from the impacts.  
He had never noticed how long the hallways actually were.  
In the middle of the rush to wash his face, he accidentally glanced at the door that led to the analysis room and, like a mirage, looked at the past version of himself alongside another laughing boy.  
He didn't want to think about his name nor see his face.  
As if to torture him further, his mind brought the echo of his laughter and his knees went weak with the memory. Before it would be considered a blessing, something so rare to hear, but now it was nothing more than a pain.  
He had to hurry up.  
Going as fast as his numb legs allowed him, the boy was panting. He couldn't look to the sides, if the walls of that house could talk then he would do anything to deafen himself. In its place, he fixed his gaze on where he should go: Straight in front of him. His eyes focused only in the center of the bathroom door at the end of the hall.  
He was so close…  
But a memory of that boy hugging him there got in the way.

It was exactly him: It was Nemi, Neme, Tim... Always has been.

In the same place where they had cuddled before, Oskar was falling apart now.  
The difference is that now his mouth was dry, as if there was a desert on his tongue, and he felt cold outside and inside.  
He was alone.  
Oskar was breathing hard, bombarded by what could have happened and what actually occurred instead. He had built something so beautiful with Tim .... But he ruined it all in one night. He can't forget those scared eyes, looking at him like a deer facing a hunter.  
He could have confessed his feelings in a better way, but didn’t: Alcohol showed the worst side of him again. Plain jealous, not knowing if Tim actually had something with the other guys and just jumping to conclusions.  
He had been such a coward, never made a proper move with him because he’d assumed those games would last forever.  
That reminded him of his situation with Martin… Only that name made his stomach clench. Oskar hugged himself, writhing in pain with watery eyes on the hall floor.  
With the Swede he had another type of cowardice: Pure fear.

He assumed reciprocity and stability with Tim, so he never took it seriously; He assumed rejection with Martin, so he never did anything.  
They were so similar relationships but the two of them ended up that day, in the same way: They just walked away, as if nothing happened, and without Oskar having appreciated them enough until that moment.  
He wasn't quite sure if it was his fault, if they were running away from him like Tim had done the night before. Still, the weight of his consciousness wrapped around him as cold sweat beading his body.

"That wasn't supposed to happen, this is not what you’re supposed to see…" He shivered, delirious to himself with chattering teeth. What he was saying didn't make a lot of literal sense but was loaded with meaning. “Remember me? I was a king, this was not what I had planned…”

Like a dam opening, the tears he had accumulated for years were released in a tsunami of feelings. Sobs escaped his lips, his voice sounding wounded as he leaned forward and rested his forehead weakly on the icy floor. He hit the tiles with clenched fists, choking on salty humiliation.  
He wondered if they wanted to see him again, how he should approach them if they did and what they would think of him after all of this… He wanted to know so many things but was suffering too much to even move.  
He emptied his heart through his eyes: His throat was scraping with pain and his eyelids were almost as exhausted as he was.  
He thought and rethought the situation, breaking his own promise to avoid it. Oskar was surprised that, after doing so, he found himself more relaxed than before. It hurt his pride to admit it but expressing what he had kept inside was like freeing himself from a heavy backpack that he had been dragging along without noticing.

When the streams in his face evaporated he finally was able to gather strength to stand up. He shuffled to the bathroom and didn't even bother to turn the lights on, already knowing that his tired eyes weren't going to handle them.

In the mirror he saw the image of him again: He was haggard and bruised with tear trails on his cheeks, but not as distorted as the last reflection he saw on the kitchen sink. One could say that he looked healthier even with the same patches of dried blood on his skin.  
He turned on the tap, watching the water run to take it in his hands and finally clean up his face. He watched as the white ceramic of the sink stained red, traveling down small rivers of watery blood until getting lost in the drain.

He looked at himself a third time.  
Now, he was wet, with damp eyelashes, reddish skin and tousled eyebrows, but overall clean.  
It was definitely the best Oskar of the three reflections he had seen that day: Maybe he was still hurt but no longer lying to himself or enduring what he just couldn’t handle until becoming unrecognizable.

He knew that, at least, he had learned something from this. He had been deceived all his life: There was no use resisting his own feelings. 

The boy sighed, sitting on the edge of the tub.  
He thought that if he wanted to grow up, he wasn't going to wait until last moment like before.  
Oskar reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. In his contacts, he wrote four letters to make the name that he had avoided once but now was looking for. He inhaled, puffing out his chest before calling his number and nervously scratched his short beard until hearing the tone that indicated the call had been answered.  
With husky voice, he dared to say: 

“Hi, Nemi?"


End file.
